I'm never against people getting rewarded for their efforts, but reporting is something which is easily abused if there's gain associated with it, and it seems like Xandry may have been rewarding per report which is even worse due to the sheer amount that could be reported for merit. Maybe there is a way to reward those who report, but merit is not one of them, and anything else that I can think of would quickly lead to abuse at least the way it is users are reporting for the right reasons.

Hardware wallets aren't any more secure than a securely generated Desktop/offline wallet. The only difference with hardware wallets is that they take precautions that users might not when they are accessing their funds regularly. This would be the only time I would recommend using a hardware wallet, however hardware wallets; both the Trezor, and Ledger have had security issues in the past which have since been patched.

I have mixed feelings on this. Xandry likely has innocent intentions, but doesn't realize that this could very easily be abused, and could result in more spam/infringing posts. I would like to think they would stop rewarding merits if they suspected this to be the case. I don't think Xandry should face punishment for this, nor be removed as a merit source. I think they should definitely stop awarding merits for reports, because of the likelihood of abuse especially now that it's more public than it was before.  

If they aren't a merit source, and was awarding members with sMerit they'vereceived himself through their posts I don't think there would be too much of a problem, because at the end of the day it's up to the person what they perceive worthy of merit. However, if they are a merit source which looks likely then it could quickly become a problem as merit sources have more merits to send out, and are 'responsible' for rewarding high quality posts. Looking at the merit sent in seems that a few people have caught on to it, and it's the same users that keep popping up. I'm not sure if they've always reported, but at a external point of view looks like they've found an easy way to earn merit.

It's a strange one, because he's sending the merit to posts that have since been deleted which means that those users would of had to post in that thread before it was deleted. Makes me wonder on how they are reporting whether they are using the report to moderator button or simply just posting in the thread with instructions to the OP on what they have done wrong etc.

All of the above is on assumption, and viewing it from an external point of view. It would be interesting to see what Xandry has to say about it. I don't think we should be too quick to judge. I think the only problem I see is:
1. Xandry is a merit source
2. How easy it is to abuse.

@OP
You know how to plug your threads don't you?

What I fail to understand is a lot of them don't even put in any effort at all. I don't know about you, but I find the majority of the population is motivated by money, and as a result if they are getting paid a good wage as opposed to other jobs then they would put in effort to keep that going. Especially, since there's a lot of competition in the 'market'. Instead they spew non English replies out, and quite often are found guilty of plagiarism.

Even though the above is a poor attitude it's better than making no effort at all. 

Multiple accounts is allowed, and staff don't moderate scams. Therefore, any reports made because of this will be marked as bad, and no action taken. The only time alt accounts may face consequences is when one of their accounts has been caught breaking the rules, and action has been taken. For example, if one of their accounts has been caught spamming or spreading ref links, and is banned for it. Only then will the alternate accounts be banned too, and that's assuming that the staff have enough evidence that the accounts are linked.

This isn't a moderation issue. Rather something that the bounty managers have to deal with themselves. The issue is that the bounty managers don't care. Possibly implementing restrictions on who can be bounty managers or post bounties/annoucement threads is the solution to the problem. But, it's no way a moderation issue.

Not exactly true those that registered before the merit system was implemented started at a generic number. Members = 10, Full Member = 100, Sr. Members = 250, Hero members 500, and finally Legendary Members = 1000. Of course, you should be aware of this since you registered in 2013, and started off with 250 merit.

Those who register from now on start on 0.

There isn't enough content/evidence before the alleged hack. Even though there's a huge post gap sometimes this can be expected when Bitcoin has an exponential rise, and rekindles the persons desire about cryptocurrencies/Bitcoin.

They have posted what appears to be a public address through an altcoin (middlecoin?). You could try, and get them to sign from there. Whether or not that coin is still alive will likely decide whether they have the private key to that address.

This doesn't really do anything about them managing the campaign though. All this does is puts a payment barrier for those who want to become a bounty manager. They could still pay the fee, and not moderate it. That's assuming your going to treat it like the Copper Membership.

If you are going to have some sort of criteria like the applicants of merit sources then I'm not sure how this would work either. What sort of data would they have to present to get accepted?

The bounty managers aren't going to care if it's automated or manual.

I don't know how much people are earning from these bounties, and I used to think it was peanuts. However, it does seem people are willing to go extraordinary lengths in order to do it.

Why? They will only receive their merit, and then go back to their shitposting ways once they can earn more from their bounties. You shouldn't be posting for merit, or for bounties. When signature campaigns, bounties, and merit wasn't a thing many people posted for various different reasons. Mainly to talk about Bitcoin, and learn. However, this forum is quickly turning into a job center.

Post because you want to post or you have something to say.

Finding them is the easy part, but archiving their posts, and then formatting that is very tedious. It's why the list hasn't been updated as much as I would like. I've still got a load of accounts in a text document that need reviewing, archiving and then finally put on the list. I would do it without the archive bit, but I like to provide evidence where ever possible.

Content has got much better since the introduction of the merit system, however regarding users ranking up slower; That's working as intended, although it might be true that only exceptional members are going to rank up multiple times we should see an improvement in this when there's a few hundred merit sources.  



Low amounts of merit being traded between alts isn't a problem as they'll likely run out of sMerit before they rank up any of their accounts. If they are trading a large amount between their accounts then this should be fairly easy to recognize. The users that feel they need to trade merit between themselves aren't likely to put in the effort to get external merit either.

Strange number, but I guess it's been implemented to prevent those who only report now, and again from moaning about their reports being bad. Seems to be working so far as I've not seen any complaints.

Fair enough. I hate reporting on my phone, and only do it with simplistic cases. Obviously, I'm not sure what you are refering too, but if it's not plagiarism then just comment something like: "Wrong section, doesn't belong in Bitcoin Discussion. Move to Speculation".

Bounty campaigns aren't moderated. Staff will not do anything, therefore it's a waste of yours, and their time reporting it.

Post in the reputation section. Moderators don't moderate alt accounts that are in enrolled in the same campaign. Scams aren't moderated either. Look at other threads in the reputation section to see what stands as proof

I will say though try, and keep it within one thread, and not multiple ones.

I'm not asking anyone to report 200 or more reports. One or two is good enough. A few people have already dedicated themselves to reporting more, but it's their choice at the end of the day. If they want a cleaner forum for the time being until restrictions are possibly implemented then the only way to go about it is reporting. I'm not expecting them to go hunting for them either, but if they happen to stumble upon spam within their normal usage of the forum then it doesn't take long at all to report.

If you want I've got a list here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2832305.msg29034329#msg29034329

You can manually check them, and see if you want to add any of them to your list if you are going to be updating it regularly as I'm finding it difficult to keep regular updates due to the fact I'll only ever add users to that list with archive evidence which can be extremely tedious to do. Especially formatting it all. So feel free to use any of them on that list as I'm only going to be aiming to update every now, and then.

Here you go have a free legendary member to add to the list: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=357163

I know your looking for a mods explanation, but if we are specifically referring to the 1 post newbie bot invasion I've just been reporting them with "Plagiarism. Original source: <link to original source> Every single one of them I've come across was either using old posts here on the forum or copying from popular news websites. The earliest post I've seen copied was in 2010.

All of them were marked good so should be sufficient.

There's really only two ways to prevent the current abuse. Either, we tackle the issue by imposing guidelines/rules that are enforced by the staff members or we take things into our own hands, and tag campaign managers.

I feel like the first suggestion would be the best, and the second suggestion wouldn't likely affect them as the people who hire them don't really care about the quality of the campaign, and only getting their name out there.

I'm not sure what theymos thinks about tackling the abuse via moderation, but I imagine he will treat it the same as spam. Although, I would argue that they are offering an incentive for bad quality posts, and therefore are the same as threads offering an incentive just on a much wider scale.